Wild Chippendale

For Chippendale's 2015 BEAMS festival, Lightwell created an installation that allowed visitors to digitally decorate a piece of paper, watch it transform into an origami creature and become part of a brightly-coloured world of wild animals.

We created an iPad app for people to decorate their digital paper. After they were finished scribbling and picking colours, they could watch their piece of paper fold up into a random animal and walk or fly off the screen, reappearing almost instantly within a diaorama projected on the nearby wall.

Each animal was assigned an unexpected special ability that allowed it to destroy other animals in the event of overpopulation - giraffes emitted lasers from their eyes, while rhinos conducted lightning from their horns. This lent a humorous quality to the installation - visitors were often surprised and amused by what their animals were doing to survive.

The installation was supported by a simple background soundscape which set the scene for the 'wild Chippendale' theme. A soft 'alert' sound helped to aurally indicate when a visitor's animal had appeared in the world, while each special ability was accompanied by different sound effects such as crashing lightning and explosions.